ThinkingBlue

Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and broadminded, the other intolerant and narrow-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND BROADMINDED USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, et al reside in the other America!

The most ancient form of democracy is found among virtually all indigenous peoples of the world. It's the way humans have lived for more than 150,000 years. There are no rich and no poor among most tribal people--everybody is "middle class." There is also little hierarchy. The concept of "chief" is one that Europeans brought with them to America--which in large part is what produced so much confusion in the 1600s and 1700s in America as most Native American tribes would never delegate absolute authority to any one person to sign a treaty. Instead decisions were made by consensus in these most ancient cauldrons of democracy.

The Founders of this nation, and the Framers of our Constitution, were heavily influenced and inspired by the democracy they saw all around them. Much of the U.S. Constitution is based on the Iroquois Confederacy--the five (later six) tribes who occupied territories from New England to the edge of the Midwest. It was a democracy with elected representatives, an upper and lower house, and a supreme court (made up entirely of women, who held final say in five of the six tribes).

As Benjamin Franklin noted to his contemporaries at the Constitutional Convention: "It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble, and yet a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies."

The Framers modeled the oldest democracies, and the oldest forms of the middle class, and thus helped create the truly widespread and strong first middle class in the history of modern civilization.

Back in Europe, however, the sort of democracy the Framers were borrowing and inventing, and even the existence of a middle class itself, was considered unnatural. For most of the seven thousand years of recorded human history, all the way back to the Gilgamesh Epic, the oldest written story, what we call a middle class is virtually unheard of--as was democracy. Throughout most of the history of what we call civilization, an unrestrained economy and the idea of hierarchical social organization has always produced a small ruling elite and a large number of nearly impoverished workers.

Up until the founding of America, the middle class was considered unnatural by many political philosophers. Thomas Hobbes wrote in his 1651 magnum opus Leviathan that the world was better off with the rule of the few over the many, even if that meant that the many were impoverished. Without a strong and iron-fisted ruler, Hobbes wrote, there would be "no place for industry . . . no arts, no letters, no society." Because Hobbes believed that ordinary people couldn't govern themselves, he believed that most people would be happy to exchange personal freedom and economic opportunity for the ability to live in safety and security. For the working class to have both freedom and security, Hobbes suggested, was impossible.

When I read the last two paragraphs of this excerpt something clicked in the old sleepy brain. For a good many years, I could not seem to figure out what the Republicans (not all but most) are after. Especially in the light of the Tea Party Movement, which the wealthiest 1% of our nation had hijacked, I asked myself 'why are these rich b**tards trying to get in on this supposedly grassroots movement? (Hey, Elfie What's It All About?) I figured, maybe it's because the grassroots tea party types do not appear to be the brightest light bulb in the room. Maybe they are being manipulated because they hate so conspicuously and it’s easy to bend, shape and twist animosity any way you want to. But that’s way too simple, there just aren’t enough tea partiers to make a difference for the Rich Fat Cats.

Now, after reading Thom Hartmann's words of wisdom it seems all too clear. They don't want to take this country back, they want to take We The People Back... to a time when there was no such thing as a Middleclass. It was unheard of! As Tomas Hobbes (also excerpted from Screwed) once wrote over three hundred years ago:

"The world {is} better off with the rule of the few over the many, even if that meant that the many were impoverished. Without a strong and iron-fisted ruler, there would be "no place for industry . . . no arts, no letters, no society."

Hobbes believed that ordinary people couldn't govern themselves, he believed that most people would be happy to exchange personal freedom and economic opportunity for the ability to live in safety and security. For the working class to have both freedom and security, was impossible.

Holy Magnum Opus Leviathan Batman, it's perfectly clear to me now. They want a complete return of TOTALITARIANISM! Like visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads… They want OLIGARCHY, with all its privileges!

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BLOG.ANTIOLIGARCHY.COM: Are we heading for an oligarchy?

Are we heading for an oligarchy?

I have never been politically active other than watching the news and voting but recent events have caused me to want to become more active. When I see my country being slowly taken control of by billionaires and large multinational corporations it deeply concerns me.

I come from a middle class family, both my parents were teachers and to say the least we were not rich. My mother worked at two jobs when I was a child, teaching grade school during the day and college math at night and my father worked at one of the toughest high schools in downtown Detroit.

Somehow with the help of the right wing media and PR firms people like my parents are now being demonized as over paid government employees out to suck the taxpayers dry. Nothing could be further from the truth; they were hard working, caring and educated people.

What is Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) It’s a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party (GOP) that is often marked by personality cultism (TEA PARTY), control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror. (Bush/Cheney administration)

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We better start realizing this to be a fact, as the architects of ‘Occupy Wall Street Protest Movement’ comprehends. This opposition to the 1% wealthiest of our nation, is real and it’s in all our best interest to either join them or support them. (As I intend to do, from this day forward, unless the top 1% corporatists lockstep in and crush it in its tracks.)

Please watch the video of this movement and how a handful of rogue cops show their ignorance (ignorance because they are middleclass also) and try to scare the protesters by pepper and mace spraying a few. What these police officers did, instead of promoting fear, they brought light to this movement and perhaps we owe them a bit of gratitude. (Gratitude that their enormous empty-headedness forced the MAINSTREAM MEDIA to acknowledge the plight of the OCCUPY WALL STREET evolution. thinkingblue

With its brutal and bloody crackdown on the peaceful demonstrators of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, the New York police demonstrated that the United States doesn't deserve to call itself a "beacon of freedom" and cradle of democracy anymore.

"Occupy Wall Street" is a grassroots movement which aims at protesting and challenging the increasing social and economic inequality and political intolerance in the United States. The movement describes itself as a "leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions." The organizers of the movement say that the only thing which they have in common is that they constitute the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. Journalists, political activists and citizens are the members of this popular movement, which has gained momentum after its advertisement was first published in July.

Now "Occupy Wall Street" is a member of the national network of political activists who are stepping up efforts to organize protests and demonstrations against the US government ahead of the upcoming November 2012 presidential elections. They are allied with the "US Day of Rage" movement, which is planning nationwide protests before the presidential elections. Their motto is "One citizen, One dollar, One vote" and their manifesto clearly indicates their dissatisfaction with the social, economic and political status of the country. They believe that certain interest groups and lobbies are running the United States and it's not the will and power of the people which prevails.

"Bought by hard and soft dollars, disloyal, incompetent, and wasteful special interests have usurped our nation's civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to liberty and our national security," their manifesto reads.

"Corporations, even those owned by foreign shareholders, use money to act as the voices of millions, while individual citizens, the legitimate voters, are silenced and demoralized by the farce," the manifesto adds.

The recent demonstrations and protests by the members of "Occupy Wall Street" was responded with the brutality and atrocity of the Manhattan police, which is said to have arrested some 100 people so far and injured many of them. According to New York Daily News, on September 24, "Hundreds of people carrying banners and chanting "shame, shame" walked between Zuccotti Park, near Wall St., and Union Square calling for changes to a financial system they say unjustly benefits the rich and harms the poor."

New York Times has released an amateur footage, which shows that the police forces have hit several protesters with pepper spray near the 12th St. and Fifth Ave. and injured many others using batons and sticks. According to NY Daily News, witnesses who were present at the scene of conflict have said that "they saw three stunned women collapse on the ground, screaming after they were sprayed in the face."

"I saw a girl get slammed on the ground. I turned around and started screaming," said Chelsea Elliott, 25, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who said she was sprayed. "I turned around and a cop was coming ... we were on the sidewalk and we weren't doing anything illegal."MORE HERE: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201454.html

Monday, September 26, 2011

I have been an opponent of the Death Penalty for many years, before that I really didn’t THINK too much about it. To me, It was just another LAW in the penal system and at that time, I gave way too much respect to people who enacted and carried out LAWS such as this, believing they knew what they were doing.I can remember the exact day that I gave this LAW a bit more thought than “WELL THEY DESERVE DEATH, DON’T THEY, AFTER WHAT THEY’VE DONE?” I was sitting in a Unitarian Church when the minister said, “Now, let us think about the Death Penalty and why it is wrong for states to legally murder their citizens because no matter how they phrase it, The Death Penalty is MURDER.”Wow, I thought to myself, that’s a different way to look at it. After that I couldn’t stop thinking about this topic. I did a little research on the subject (it was the 70’s when Personal Computers and Google were not part of everyday ‘take for granted’ living) and I physically had to go to the library or buy magazines and newspapers that featured any article referring to this law.During this thumbnail investigation, I found out some startling facts that not only did I not know but I would estimate a guess, hardly anyone knew who supported Capital Punishment.One jump off the page fact, believe it or not, ***it is way more expensive to execute someone than imprison them for life without parole.*** IT’S TRUE! So there goes that old rumor mill EYE FOR AN EYE reason for this law from those who want people to die for their crimes. Here’s one little (unknown) fact from old Rick Perry’s state (THE WINNER AND STILL CHAMPION OF STATE SANCTIONED MURDER):

A review of the literature about the death penalty shows that no state has saved money by using it. For example, A Dallas Morning News study of costs in Texas, the state which has executed the most prisoners in the U.S., showed the cost of executing a prisoner, including all expenses from trial through appeals, and assuming the case concluded in 7.5 years, to be $2,316,655; Imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security for 40 years in Texas costs about $750,000.Source of Texas Information: Christy Hoppe, "Executions Cost Texas Millions," The Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992 p. 12A. MORE HERE: http://greensboropeerpressure.blogspot.com/2006/08/economic-impact-of-death-penalty-vs_03.html

The next bit of information I got from a Google search which clears the air about why the Death Penalty is wrong and should be abolished:

Should the death penalty be allowed?1. Morality"Ultimately, the moral question surrounding capital punishment in America has less to do with whether those convicted of violent crime deserve to die than with whether state and federal governments deserve to kill those whom it has imprisoned. The legacy of racial apartheid, racial bias, and ethnic discrimination is unavoidably evident in the administration of capital punishment in America. Death sentences are imposed in a criminal justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment." - Bryan Stevenson, JD---2. Constitutionality"Death is... an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity... The fatal constitutional infirmity in the punishment of death is that it treats 'members of the human race as nonhumans, as objects to be toyed with and discarded. [It is] thus inconsistent with the fundamental premise of the Clause that even the vilest criminal remains a human being possessed of common human dignity.' [quoting himself from Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 257 (1972)] As such it is a penalty that 'subjects the individual to a fate forbidden by the principle of civilized treatment guaranteed by the [Clause].' [quoting C.J. Warren from Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958)] I therefore would hold, on that ground alone, that death is today a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Clause... I would set aside the death sentences imposed... as violative of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments."William J. Brennan, JDJustice of the US Supreme CourtDissenting opinion in Gregg v. Georgia (347 KB) July 2, 1976---3. Deterrence"There is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than long terms of imprisonment. States that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without such laws. And states that have abolished capital punishment show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates. The death penalty has no deterrent effect. Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been thoroughly discredited by social science research." - American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)"The Death Penalty: Questions and Answers," ACLU.orgApr. 9, 2007---4. RetributionCON: "Retribution is just another word for revenge, and the desire for revenge is one of the lowest human emotions — perhaps sometimes understandable, but not really a rational response to a critical situation. To kill the person who has killed someone close to you is simply to continue the cycle of violence which ultimately destroys the avenger as well as the offender. That this execution somehow give 'closure' to a tragedy is a myth. Expressing one’s violence simply reinforces the desire to express it. Just as expressing anger simply makes us more angry. It does not drain away. It contaminates the otherwise good will which any human being needs to progress in love and understanding." - Raymond A. Schroth, SJJesuit Priest and Community Professor of the Humanities at St. Peter's CollegeEmail to ProCon.orgSep. 5, 2008---5. Irrevocable MistakesCON: "...Since the reinstatement of the modern death penalty, 87 people have been freed from death row because they were later proven innocent. That is a demonstrated error rate of 1 innocent person for every 7 persons executed. When the consequences are life and death, we need to demand the same standard for our system of justice as we would for our airlines... It is a central pillar of our criminal justice system that it is better that many guilty people go free than that one innocent should suffer... Let us reflect to ensure that we are being just. Let us pause to be certain we do not kill a single innocent person. This is really not too much to ask for a civilized society." - Russ Feingold, JDUS Senator (D-WI)introducing the "National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2000"April 26, 2000---6. Cost of Death vs. Life in PrisonCON: "In the course of my work, I believe I have reviewed every state and federal study of the costs of the death penalty in the past 25 years. One element is common to all of these studies: They all concluded that the cost of the death penalty amounts to a net expense to the state and the taxpayers. Or to put it differently,the death penalty is clearly more expensive than a system handling similar cases with a lesser punishment. [It] combines the costliest parts of both punishments: lengthy and complicated death penalty trials, followed by incarceration for life... Everything that is needed for an ordinary trial is needed for a death penalty case, only more so:• More pre-trial time...• More experts...• Twice as many attorneys...• Two trials instead of one will be conducted: one for guilt and one for punishment.• And then will come a series of appeals during which the inmates are held in the high security of death row." - Richard C. Dieter, MS, JDExecutive Director of the Death Penalty Information CenterTestimony to the Judiciary Committee of the Colorado State House of Representatives regarding "House Bill 1094 - Costs of the Death Penalty and Related Issues"Feb. 7, 2007----7. RaceCON: "Despite the fact that African Americans make up only 13 percent of the nation’s population, almost 50 percent of those currently on the federal death row are African American. And even though only three people have been executed under the federal death penalty in the modern era, two of them have been racial minorities. Furthermore, all six of the next scheduled executions are African Americans. The U.S. Department of Justice’s own figures reveal that between 2001 and 2006, 48 percent of defendants in federal cases in which the death penalty was sought were African Americans… the biggest argument against the death penalty is that it is handed out in a biased, racially disparate manner." - National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)"NAACP Remains Steadfast in Ending Death Penalty & Fighting Injustice in America's Justice System,” NAACP websiteJune 28, 2007---8. Income LevelCON: "Who pays the ultimate penalty for crimes? The poor. Who gets the death penalty? The poor. After all the rhetoric that goes on in legislative assemblies, in the end, when the net is cast out, it is the poor who are selected to die in this country. And why do poor people get the death penalty? It has everything to do with the kind of defense they get. Money gets you good defense. That's why you'll never see an O.J. Simpson on death row. As the saying goes: 'Capital punishment means them without the capital get the punishment.'" - Helen Prejean, MAAnti-death penalty activist and author of Dead Man Walking"Would Jesus Pull the Switch?,” Salt of the Earth1997---9. Attorney QualityCON: "[A] shocking two out of three death penalty convictions have been overturned on appeal because of police and prosecutorial misconduct, as well as serious errors by incompetent court-appointed defense attorneys with little experience in trying capital cases. How can we contend that we provide equal justice under the law when we do not provide adequate representation to the poor in cases where a life hangs in the balance? We, the Congress, must bear our share of responsibility for this deplorable situation. In short, while others, like Governor Ryan in Illinois, have recognized the flaws in the death penalty, the Congress still just doesn't get it. This system is broken." - John Conyers, Jr., JDUS Congressman (D-MI)Hearing for the Innocence Protection Act of 2000 before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of RepresentativesJune 20, 2000---10. Physicians at ExecutionsCON: "The American Medical Association's policy is clear and unambiguous... requiring physicians to participate in executions violates their oath to protect lives and erodes public confidence in the medical profession. A physician is a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life... The use of a physician's clinical skill and judgment for purposes other than promoting an individual's health and welfare undermines a basic ethical foundation of medicine — first, do no harm. The guidelines in the AMA Code of Medical Ethics address physician participation in executions involving lethal injection. The ethical opinion explicitly prohibits selecting injection sites for executions by lethal injection, starting intravenous lines, prescribing, administering, or supervising the use of lethal drugs, monitoring vital signs, on site or remotely, and declaring death." - American Medical Association (AMA)"AMA: Physician Participation in Lethal Injection Violates Medical Ethics," press release from the AMA websiteJuly 17, 2006---The list above contains the ten Con’s to see the PRO’s Click this link:http://deathpenalty.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002000

Now to continue with the reason for today's blog. Below read the thoughts of a man who was right in the middle of the State Sanctioned Murder Machine. It will surprise you that so many who are caught up in the injustice of this law and do not like it but have to go through the motions of carrying it out. The main motivation is earning a paycheck. It is just too morbid and too sad. thinkingblue

I can't always remember their names, but in my nightmares I can see their faces. As the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections from 1992 until 1995, I oversaw five executions. The first two were Thomas Dean Stevens and Christopher Burger, accomplices in a monstrous crime: as teenagers in 1977, they robbed and raped a cabdriver, put him in the trunk of a car, and pushed the vehicle into a pond. I had no doubt that they were guilty: they admitted it to me. But now it was 1993 and they were in their 30s. All these years later, after a little frontal-lobe development, they were entirely different people.

On execution days, I always drove from Atlanta to the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. I knew death row well: 20 years earlier, I had built it. The state had hired me as the warden of Georgia Diagnostic in 1971, where I renovated a special cell block for especially violent offenders. After I left Georgia in 1977, the state reinstated the death penalty and turned the cell block I had developed into death row.

The state executed Stevens first, in June 1993, and then Burger in December. In both instances, I visited them in a cell next to the electric-chair chamber, where they counted down the hours until they died. They were calm, mature, and remorseful. When the time came, I went to a small room directly behind the death chamber where the attorney general worked the phones, checking with the courts to make sure that the executions were not stayed. Then we asked the prisoners for their final words. Stevens said nothing, and Burger apologized, saying, "Please forgive me." I looked to the prison electrician and ordered him to pull the switch. Last Wednesday, as the state of Georgia prepared to execute Troy Davis despite concerns about his guilt, I wrote a letter with five former death-row wardens and directors urging Georgia prison officials to commute his sentence. I feared not only the risk of Georgia killing an innocent man, but also the psychological toll it would exact on the prison workers who performed his execution. "No one has the right to ask a public servant to take on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, and for some of us, shame and guilt," we wrote in our letter.

The men and women who assist in executions are not psychopaths or sadists. They do their best to perform the impossible and inhumane job with which the state has charged them. Those of us who have participated in executions often suffer something very much like posttraumatic stress. Many turn to alcohol and drugs. For me, those nights that weren't sleepless were plagued by nightmares. My mother and wife worried about me. I tried not to share with them that I was struggling, but they knew I was.

I didn't grow up saying, "I want to work in prisons." I had never even been in a prison or a jail before I became warden of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison. The commissioner at the time hired me to revamp the system, to implement case management, and work with inmates to make them safer. I had always worked in helping professions, and my main goal in corrections was always to reduce recidivism, so that inmates would leave prison better than they arrived. Over this course of time, the death penalty figured larger and larger into my work. I never supported it, but I also did not want to let it distract me from improving overall prison conditions. Death-row inmates are, after all, only a tiny fraction of the prison population.

When I was required to supervise an execution, I tried to rationalize my work by thinking, if I just save one future victim, maybe it is worth it. But I was very aware of the research showing that the death penalty wasn't a deterrent. I left my job as corrections commissioner in Georgia in 1995 partially because I had had enough: I didn't want to supervise the executions anymore. My focus changed to national crime policy and then to academia, where I could work to improve the criminal-justice system without participating in its worst parts. Today, I am the dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University.

Having witnessed executions firsthand, I have no doubts: capital punishment is a very scripted and rehearsed murder. It's the most premeditated murder possible. As Troy Davis's execution approached - and then passed its set hour, as the Supreme Court considered a stay - I thought of the terrible tension we all experienced as executions dragged into the late hours of the night. No one wanted to go ahead with the execution, but then a court stay offered little relief: you knew you were going to repeat the whole process and execute him sometime in the future.

I will always live with these images - with "nagging doubt," even though I do not believe that any of the executions carried out under my watch were mistaken. I hope that, in the future, men and women will not die for their crimes, and other men and women will not have to kill them. The United States should be like every other civilized country in the Western world and abolish the death penalty. MORE HERE

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Yes but not in this barbarous, bloodthirsty, callous, godforsaken country. People DO NOT matter, one less non-voter DOES NOT matter. It's all a game to those who hold power (Mostly Republicans but not all). Troy Davis was executed last night and I'll bet those who believe they'll benefit by the decision to execute (i.e. SCOTUS, Rick Perry, Nathan Deal and the rest of the cutthroats who support the DEATH PENALTY) are dancing in the streets... I hope there will be justice for Troy Davis and that he did not die in vain. Perhaps, this will be the beginning of the end for this savage law.

According to Amnesty International, 137 countries have abolished the death penalty. Argentina, Chile, and Uzbekistan outlawed the death penalty in 2008. During 2007, 24 countries, 88% in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States alone, executed 1,252 people compared to 1,591 in 2006. Nearly 3,350 people were sentenced to death in 51 countries. More than 20,000 prisoners are on death row across the world.

Doesn't this life hold enough sadness without STATE SANCTIONED MURDER? :-( thinkingblue

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Troy Davis Executed in Georgia

—By Tim Murphy

World Coalition Against the Death Penalty/Wikimedia Commons

Despite evidence that threw into question the veracity of his conviction, pleas from a former president and the Pope, and even a last-minute review of the case by the US Supreme Court on Wednesday night, Troy Davis was executed by lethal ejection shortly after 11 p.m. on Wednesday evening in Georgia.

Davis, whose case we wrote about in full detail here, was convicted on 1991 on charges that he murdered a Savannah police officer. Davis had put off eating his final meal in the expectation that he would be granted a stay of execution—as he had three times before in the past—but by Wednesday morning, he had exhausted all of his options, and a standing offer to submit to a polygraph test was rebuffed by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. The final lethal injection was delayed for more than three hours as the state waited to hear from the United States Supreme Court (which dismissed the appeal without dissent). MORE HERE

Friday, September 16, 2011

9/11The Years of Shame - Howthe truth hurts those who wish it to stay hidden by their lies.

I could not even lookat anything commemorating that horrendous day in September 10years ago. The Republican Party used it (milked it to death) as away to get what they had yearned for some 13 years prior to thatsad day for America. The GOP made it into an agenda for Wars,Greed and Power and It still makes me sick when I think of themultitudes of human beings that suffered (and still aresuffering) because of the Neoconservatives’ belief that THEEND JUSTIFIES THE MEANS.

Not one TV show nor news item did I watch or read about the 9/11anniversary. I am so glad that Krugman put to words the illfeelings I had during THE RELIVING OF THAT DAY (A grim reminderof The Neocon Republicans' dirty deeds).

Paul Krugman is a brave hero for exposing the shame so many of usfelt during the past ten years. thinkingblue---

The disgrace is the responsibility of such “fake heroes” as former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and President George W. Bush, darlings of the Republican Party who “[cashed] in on the horror” for personal and political gain and drove the country apart, (Krugman) writes.

As Krugman has said elsewhere, the truth is often shrill. —ARK

The Huffington Post:

Paul Krugman drew conservative outrage on Sunday when he wrote that the anniversary of 9/11 had become a marker of “shame” for the U.S.

The New York Times columnist wrote a blog post called “The Years of Shame,” in which he said that “what happened after 9/11” was “deeply shameful.” Krugman castigated people like Rudy Giuliani and President Bush as “fake heroes” who exploited the attacks for their own personal, political or military gain. He also said that many in the media had “[lent] their support to the hijacking of the atrocity.”

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Oh, how the truthhurts those who wish it to stay hidden by their lies… CWthinkingblue

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on theright know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeplyshameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, butinstead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik,Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on thehorror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated warthe neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professionalpundits — people who should have understood very well whatwas happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eyeto the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking ofthe atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has becomean occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

I am completely puzzled by the Ron Paul “Movement” or better put “The Libertarian Ayn Rand Momentum” of WE ARE ONLY RESPONSIBLE FOR OURSELVES let those of us who may suffer EAT CAKE!

Oh, old Ron Paul walks a good walk and talks a good talk about how this world would be so much better if Government hardly existed. He touts the goodies of BOOTSTRAPS and preaches the old libertarian mantra of “free enterprise, private property, and limited government” which sounds so good to the layman’s ear but in essence NO GOVERNMENT and PULL YOURSELF UP BY YOUR BOOTSTRAPS does not work.

We humans as individuals or as groups are not a ONE SIZE FITS ALL. We are not all born into a privileged society that sports equal playing fields. If we were the Ron Pauls of this world would be correct in their childlike assumption that anyone who finds themselves in a ROCK BOTTOM situation has no one to blame but THYSELF.

I have to ask… WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? How can they close their eyes to the obscene suffering so many of our fellow human beings are subjected to? The abject poverty, birth defects, diseases, old age, orphaned, abandoned or abused children that are readily all around for them to see. How in the world can they rationalize the plights of just being born human? It appears (to me anyhow) that they want the human race to topple from its ivory tower at the top of the food-chain and assimilate back into the lower part of this harrowing chain where it’s Survival Of The Fittest all the way.

Below is a quote from our president that sums it all up so eloquently:

“If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription, who has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer - even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American or Mexican-American family being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of an attorney or due process, I know that that threatens my civil liberties. And I don't have to be a woman to be concerned that the Supreme Court is trying to take away a woman's right, because I know that my rights are next. It is that fundamental belief - I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper - that makes this country work.” -- Barack Obama--

So Ron Paul your statement of “That is what freedom is all about and taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everyone…”... is not only cruel, IT'S SENSELESS (if not totally daffy)!

We live in a time of dangerous thinking from dangerous minds. We must all fight this type of STINKING THINKING and make sure we who believe WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER, get out there and use the only tool available to us and VOTE! thinkingblue

The Tea Party and Ron Paul Cheer for the Uninsured to Die September 12, 2011 By Robert Sobel

During the Tea Party debate, a question was asked to Libertarian favorite, Ron Paul. Ron Paul was asked if an uninsured 30 year old has a serious accident, who would pay for treatment under your health plan? Paul tried to run around the question and claim that the uninsured would want the government to pay if they wanted a socialist system, but then he finally got to his real answer.

Ron Paul: That is what freedom is all about and taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to take care of everyone…

(Tea Party crowd cheers)

Moderator: But congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

We contend here, however, that the model of government is akin, not to the business firm, but to the criminal organization, and indeed that the State is the organization of robbery systematized and writ large. MORE HERE: http://www.zompist.com/libertos.html

About Me

Yes, there are two Americas’ Virginia, they exist as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist. One tolerant and
free-thinking, the other intolerant and close-minded!
Sincerely, thinkingblue, from the TOLERANT AND FREE-THINKING USA
PS: Joe (You Lie) Wilson, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh et al reside in the intolerant America!